Canterbury

We see St. Augustine’s Abby, St. Martin’s church and the Roman Museum then head back to Brighton.

The Canterbury Cathedral, St. Augustine’s Abby, and St Martin’s church are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We passed by St. Paul’s Church, it was open to look around. St. Paul’s and St. Martin’s are a two point parish.

St. Martin’s church was not open to visit inside. It is the oldest church in England that is still in active use. St. Augustine used it as his mission headquarters when he arrived in 597. It may have been built as a church in Roman times, but was restored as a church for Queen Bertha when she married the pagan King of Kent in 580.

St. Augustine’s Abby has a museum and the ruins of the Abby. The Abby was taken over by Henry VIII after the English Reformation. After the Abby was dissolved, it spent time as a palace and a jail before falling to ruins.

You can see the cathedral from a hill on the Abby grounds.

Some of the side buildings have been kept up and are used as a school.

After lunch, we saw the Roman Museum which is near the Cathedral. Much of the older part of Canterbury is built over Roman ruins. The hotel we stayed at had a glassed over portion of the lobby floor that you could see the foundations of a Roman theater.

An air duct that was built into a wall for underfloor heating in a Roman building.

The streets in the older portion are mostly pedestrian streets (and deliveries).

The Old Weaver’s buildings were built in the 1500s, now a restaurant.

We started our walk to the train station perhaps a bit early, arriving at the train 40 minutes before our train was to leave. The first two trains arrived on time and we had no troubles, but we sat on the tracks approaching Redhill for 7-8 minutes and missed our next train. We got off at Gatwick Airport because there were more options for trains to Brighton.